'Yes, that is likely,' said the girl.
'We must not speculate and plan as though he were a villain,' I repeated. 'I believe the safe course will be to behave as though we did not doubt he will transfer us when the chance offers, and we must be ceaseless in our expression of anxiety to get home.'
'That will be genuine in us,' said Helga, 'and I would rather act so. He will soon discover,' added she, colouring, 'that he is merely increasing the expenses of the voyage by detaining us.'
'He is not a rascal,' said I; 'he means very honestly; he wishes to make you his wife.' She raised her hand. 'Admiration in him has nimble feet. I have heard of love at first sight, but have scarcely credited it till now.' Her eyes besought me to be still, but I continued, urged, I believe, by some little temper of jealousy, owing to the thought of this Captain being in love with her, which was making me feel that I was growing very fond of her too. 'But his ideas are those of an honourable pious man,' said I. 'He is a widower—his daughter leads a lonely life at home—he knows as much about you as he could find out by plying us both with questions. He is certainly not a handsome man, but——' Here I stopped short.
She gazed at me with an expression of alarm.
'Oh, Hugh!' she cried, with touching plaintiveness of air and voice, 'you will remain my friend!'
'What have I said or done to make you doubt it, Helga?'
'What would you counsel?' she continued. 'Do you intend to side with him?'
'God forbid!' said I hastily.
She turned to the sea to conceal her face.
'Helga,' said I softly, for there was no chance for further tenderness than speech would convey, with Abraham stumping the deck to windward and a pair of dusky eyes at the wheel often turned upon us, 'I am sorry to have uttered a syllable to vex you. How much I am your friend you would know if you could see into my heart.'
She looked at me quickly, with her eyes full of tears, but with a grateful smile too. I was about to speak.
'Hush!' she exclaimed, and walked right aft, raising her hand to her brow, as though she spied something on the horizon astern.
'A delightful day—quite tropical,' exclaimed the Captain, advancing from the poop ladder. 'What does Miss Nielsen see?'
'She is always searching for a sail,' said I.
'May I take it,' said he, 'that you have communicated to her what has passed between us?'
'Captain,' I said, 'you ask, and perhaps you expect too much. You have been a married man; you must therefore know the ropes, as the sailors say, better than I, who have not yet been in love. All that I can positively assure you is that Miss Nielsen is exceedingly anxious to return home with me to England.'
'It would be unreasonable in me to expect otherwise—for the present,' said he.
He left me and joined Helga, and I gathered, by the motions of his arms, that he was discoursing on the beauty of the morning. Presently he went below, and very shortly afterwards returned, bearing a little folding-chair and a cotton umbrella. He placed the chair near the skylight. Helga seated herself and took the umbrella from him, the shade of which she might find grateful, for the sun had now risen high in the heavens—there was heat in the light, with nothing in the wind to temper the rays of the luminary. The Captain offered me a cigar with a bland smile, lighted one himself, and reposed in a careless, flowing way upon the skylight close to Helga; his long whiskers stirred like smoke upon his waistcoat to the blowing of the wind, his loose trousers of blue serge rippled, his chins seemed to roll as though in motion down betwixt the points of his collar. Clearly his study in the direction of posture was animated by a theory of careless, youthful, sailorly elegance; yet never did nautical man so completely answer to one's notions of a West-End hairdresser.
He was studiously courteous, and excessively anxious to recommend himself. I could not discover that he was in the least degree embarrassed by the supposition that I had repeated his conversation to Helga, though her manner must have assured him that I had told her everything. He was shrewd enough to see, however, that she was in a mood to listen rather than to be talked to, and so in the main he addressed himself to me. He asked me many questions about my lifeboat experiences: particularly wished to know if I thought that my boat, which had been stove in endeavouring to rescue Miss Nielsen and her lamented father, would be replaced.
'Should a fund be raised,' he exclaimed, 'I beg that my name may not be omitted. My humble guinea is entirely at the service of the noble cause you represent. And what grand end may not a humble guinea be instrumental in promoting! It may help to rescue many wretched souls from the perdition that would otherwise await them were they to be drowned without having time to repent. This is lamentably true of sailors, Mr. Tregarthen. Scarcely a mariner perishes at sea who would not require many years of a devotional life to purge himself of his numerous vices. A humble guinea may also spare many children the misery of being fatherless, and it may shed sunshine upon humble homes by restoring husbands to their wives. You will kindly put me down for a humble guinea.'
I thanked him as though I supposed he was in earnest.
'You will never take charge of a lifeboat again, I hope,' said Helga.
'Why not? I like the work,' I answered.
'See what it has brought you to,' said she.
'Into enjoying the association and friendship of Miss Helga Nielsen!' exclaimed the Captain. 'Mr. Tregarthen will surely not regret that experience.'
'I feel that I am responsible for his being here, Captain Bunting,' said she, 'and I shall continue wretched till we are journeying to England.'
'I would gladly put my ship about and sail her home to oblige you,' exclaimed the Captain, 'but for one consideration: not the pecuniary loss that would follow—oh dear no!' he added, slowly shaking his head; 'it would too quickly sever me from a companionship I find myself happy in.'
She bit her lip, looking down with a face of dismay and chagrin, while he eyed her as though seeking for signs of gratification.
'The Canary Islands are within a short sail, I think, Captain,' said I.
'They are,' he responded.
'It would occasion no deviation, I think, for you to heave off some port there—call at Santa Cruz—and send us ashore in one of your excellent sharp-ended quarter-boats.'
'That would be giving me no time,' he answered without the least hesitation, and speaking and smiling in the politest, the most bland manner conceivable, 'to prevail upon you and Miss Nielsen to accompany me.'
'But to accompany you where, Captain?' cried I, warming up.
'To the Cape,' he answered.
'Ay, to the Cape,' said I; 'but I understood that you were to call there to discharge a small cargo and await orders.'
'You do not put it quite accurately,' said he, still oily to the last degree in his accent and expression. 'I own the greater proportion of this vessel, and my orders are my interests. When I have discharged this cargo I must look out for another.'
'Yes,' said I, 'and when you have got it, where is it going to carry you to?'
'Ah!' he exclaimed with a sigh, 'who can pierce the future? But who would pierce it? Depend upon it, young gentleman, that human blindness—I mean intellectual blindness——' he was proceeding; but I was in no humour to listen to a string of insipid, nasally pronounced commonplaces.
'The long and the short of it, Captain Bunting——' said I, finding an impulse in the soft but glowing eyes which Helga fixed upon me. But, before I could proceed, Abraham came from the little brass rail which protected the break of the poop.
'Beg pardon, sir,' said he, addressing the Captain. 'That there chap Nakier has arsted to be allowed to say a word along wi' ye.'
'Where is he, Wise?' inquired the Captain, smiling into the boatman's face.
'He's awaiting down on the quarter-deck, sir.'
'Call him.'
The 'boss' mounted the ladder. I was again impressed by the modest, the gentle air his handsome face wore. His fine liquid, dusky eyes glittered as he approached, but without in the least qualifying his docile expression. He pulled off his queer old soldier's cap, and stood looking an instant earnestly from me to Helga, before fastening his dark but brilliant gaze upon the Captain.
'What now, Nakier?'
'Dere's Goh Syn Koh says de men's dinner to-day is allee same as yesterday,' said the man.
'You mean pork and pease-soup?'
'Yaas, sah,' answered the fellow, nodding with an Eastern swiftness of gesture.
'Just so. Pork and pease-soup. You threw your allowance overboard yesterday. I have not ordered pork and pease-soup to be given to you two days running as a punishment!—oh dear no!' he went on with a greasy chuckle coming out, as it were, from the heart of his roll of chins. 'What! punish a crew by giving them plenty to eat? No, no! I simply intend that you and the rest of you shall know that I am captain of this ship, and that I must have my way!'
'Dat is proper,' exclaimed Nakier. 'No man ever say no to dat. But we no eat pork. We sooner eat dirt. We will not eat pease-soup; it is gravy of pork. We sooner drink tar.'
'Can you conceive such bigotry, such superstition, in men who are really, Miss Nielsen, not totally wanting in brains?' exclaimed the Captain, turning to Helga.
She looked away from him.
'Nakier,' he continued, 'you know, my good fellow, there must be a beginning. Have you ever tasted pork?'
'No, sah; it is against my religion!' cried the man vehemently.
'Your religion!' exclaimed the Captain. 'Alas, poor man! it is not religion—it is superstition of the most deplorable kind! and, since every captain stands as father to his crew, it is my duty, as your father for the time, to endeavour to win you, my children, for the time, to a knowledge of the truth!' He glanced askew at Helga, and proceeded: 'You will begin by eating each of you a mouthful of pork. I do not expect much—just one mouthful apiece to begin with. You may then follow on with a meal of salt-beef. The first step is everything. My idea is to deal with one superstition at a time. Why should pork be unfit for you? It is good for this lady; it is good for me; for this gentleman; for Wise there. Are we inferior to you, Nakier, that we should be willing to eat what you and my poor dark crew—dark in mind as in skin—profess to disdain?'
'We cannot eat pork,' said the man.
'Oh, I think so. You will try?'
'No, sah, no!' There was a sharp, wild gleam in his eyes as he pronounced these words, a look that desperately contradicted his face, and his gaze at the Captain was now a steadfast stare.
'I desire,' continued the Captain, very blandly, 'to get rid of your deplorable prejudices as I would extinguish a side of bacon—rasher by rasher.' This he said with another leer at Helga. 'I have some knowledge of your faith. You need but make up your mind to know that what I do I do in the highest interests of my crew, and then I shall have every hope of getting you to listen to me, and of transforming you all into thoughtful Christian men before we reach Cape Town.'
'You will give us beef to-day, sah?'
'I think not, and if you throw your allowance overboard you shall have pork again to-morrow.'
'We did not sign your articles for dis,' said the man, who spoke English with a good accent.
'The articles provide for certain food,' answered the Captain, 'and that food is served out to you in very good measure. You will try—you will try to eat this pork; and when I learn that you have everyone of you swallowed one mouthful, you will find me indulgent in other directions, and ready to proceed on the only course which can result in your salvation.'
'You will not give us beef to-day, sah?' said the man, shaking his head.
'Yes; but I must learn first that you have eaten of the pork. I will not insist upon the soup, but the pork you must eat!'
'No, sah!'
'You can go forward!'
'We signed for meat, sah: we cannot work on biscuit!'
'Meat you have, and excellent meat too! It is my business to make Christians of you. This little struggle is natural. You can go forward, I say!'
Helga, catching her breath as though to a sudden hysteric constriction of the throat, cried out, 'Captain, do not starve these men! Give them the food their religion permits them to eat!'
He looked at her for a moment or two in silence. It was hard to guess at his mind under that fixedly smiling countenance, but it seemed to me as though in those few moments of pause there was happening a really bitter conflict of thought in him.
'I know my duty!' he exclaimed. 'I know what my responsibilities are here: what is expected of me!' He reflected again. 'I shall have to render an account for my conduct and human weakness is not forgiven in those who know what is right, and who are in a position to maintain, enforce, and confirm the right.' He paused again, then saying softly to Helga, 'For your sake!' he turned to Nakier. 'This lady wishes that the crew shall have the food their black and wicked superstitions suffer them to eat. Be it so—for to-day. Let the cook go to Mr. Jones's cabin for the key of the harness-cask.'
Without a word, the man rounded upon his heel and went forward.
The Captain gazed at Helga while he pensively pulled his whiskers.
'It is just possible,' said he, 'that you may not be very intimately acquainted with the character of the religion I am endeavouring to correct in those poor dark fellow-creatures of mine.'
'I dare say they are very happy in their belief,' she answered.
He arched his eyebrows and spread his waistcoat, and had fetched a deep breath preparatory to delivering one of his fathoms of tedious commonplace, but his eye was at that instant taken by the clock under the skylight.
'Ha!' he cried, 'I must fetch my sextant; it is drawing on to noon. I will bring you an instrument, Miss Nielsen; we will shoot the sun together.'
'No, if you please,' she exclaimed.
He entreated a little, but her no was so resolutely pronounced that, contenting himself with a bland flourish of his hand, he went below.
'What is to be done?' whispered Helga. 'We shall not be able to induce him to land us at Santa Cruz. Is he mad, do you think?'
'No more than I am,' said I. 'One vocation is not enough for the fellow. There are others like him in my country of Great Britain. What a sea-captain, to be sure! How well he talks—I mean for a sea-captain! He has a good command of words. I wager he has made more than one rafter echo in his day. And he is sincere too. I saw the struggle in him when you asked that the men should have their bit of beef.'
'How am I to make him understand,' said she, 'that nothing can follow his keeping us here?'
'At all events,' I exclaimed, 'we can do nothing until we sight a ship heading for home.'
'That is true,' she answered.
'We came aboard yesterday,' I continued, 'since when nothing has been sighted, therefore, be the disposition of the man what it will, he could not down to this moment have put us in the way of getting home. But here he comes.'
He rose through the companion hatch, with a sextant in his hand, and, stepping over to the weather side of the deck, fell to ogling the sun that flamed over the weather-bow.